Movie Answer Man: The traffic in trafficking
Thursday, October 11th, 2007Q: In your review of “Trade,” about child sexual trafficking, you raise the issue of how or why such a serious subject should be made “entertaining.” I believe you answered that question in your last line when you stated that “the movie seems to have an unwholesome determination to show us the victims being terrified and threatened. When I left the screening, I just didn’t feel right.” As an adult survivor of these atrocities, I felt that this movie gave a realistic expose of human trafficking. Do you think that a movie like “Trade” needs to try even harder to be entertaining so that viewers can move beyond indifference and allow themselves to be emphatically disturbed as you were, yet find enough relief in the lighter entertaining moments to actually leave feeling moved in a sad but wholesome way?
Nancy F., Chicago
A. It’s complicated. My friend Gene Siskel had a real issue about movies showing children in danger. I think it all depends on the danger and how it shows the children. Certainly it should not linger on the elements that are most exploitative.
